Chapter 19: Chapter 19

Neither time nor a breakup would change that.

That’s clearly not what she wanted to hear, and she pushes my hand away with a “don’t.”

“I don’t need a safe place, Landon, I need . . . well, I don’t even know what I need because my life is fucking failing and I don’t know how to fix it.” Her eyes are dark now, waiting for my response.

Her life is failing? What does that even mean?

“How so? Is it school?”

“It’s everything—literally every damn thing in my life.”

I’m not following. That’s probably because she hasn’t given me any information to allow me to help her.

When I was about fifteen, I realized that I would do anything to make sure she was okay. I’m the fixer, I’m the one who fixes everything for everyone, especially the curly-haired neighbor girl with an asshole for a father and a brother who could barely speak in his home without getting a bruise for the effort. Here we are, five years later, out of that slow, eroding town, away from that man, and some things really never change.

“Tell me something that I can go on.” My hand covers hers and she pulls away, just like I knew she would. I let her. I always have.

“I didn’t get the part that I’ve been training and training and training for the last two months. I thought this role was mine. I even let my GPA drop because I spent so much time rehearsing for my audition.” She lets out a forced breath at the end and closes her eyes again.

“What happened with the audition? Why didn’t you get it?” I need more pieces of the puzzle before I can form a solution.

“Because I’m not white.” She says it loud, certain.

Her answer presses against the small bubble of anger that only holds things that I’m helpless over. I can fix a lot of shit, but I can’t fix ignorance, as much as I would love to.

“They said that?” I keep my voice down, even though I don’t want to. They couldn’t have possibly actually said that to a student?

She shakes her head, huffing out a held-in breath.

“No, they didn’t have to. Every single lead they choose is white. I’m so tired of it.”

I lean my back against the wooden chair and take the first sip of my coffee.

“Did you speak to someone?” I ask timidly.

We’ve had this talk before, a few times. Being biracial in the Midwest didn’t trouble anyone in our neighborhood, or hardly anyone at our school. The population of Saginaw is pretty even when it comes to race, and I lived in a predominantly black area. But still, there were a few times when someone would ask her or me why we were together.

“Why do you only date white guys?”her friends would ask her.

“Why don’t you date a white girl?”trashy girls with white eyeliner and gel pens shoved into their mock-designer Kmart bags would ask me. Nothing against Kmart, I always liked that store before it closed down. Well, except the sticky floors—they were the worst.

Dakota slurps on the end of her straw for a few seconds. When she pulls away, she has a dot of whipped cream on the corner of her lip. I fight my instinct to gently swipe it away.

“Remember when we would sit in Starbucks in Saginaw for hours?”

And just like that, she’s closing off her real complaint. I don’t push her to talk about it any longer. I never have.

I nod.

“And we would give them fake names every time.” She laughs. “And that one time that lady got so pissed because she couldn’t spell Hermione and she refused to write our names on the cups anymore?”

Her laughter is real now and suddenly I’m fifteen, running down the street after a rebellious Dakota, who has leaned over the counter and stolen the woman’s marker right from her apron. It was snowing that day, and we were covered in dirty brown slush by the time we made it home. My mom was confused when Dakota shouted that we were running from the cops as we ran up the stairs of my old house.

I join her soft reverie. “We actually thought the cops would waste their time on two teenagers